well, to be fair we kind of do in shortpacked, when he keeps an amber pillow (I believe we’re all waiting on one of those, Willis) and basically stalks her, and creeps out every female he meets save one. Showing people endless charts to enforce his superiority. Seriously I can’t think of any redeeming factors, I mean, you can feel bad for him because he’s clearly neurotic, but never-the-less not someone I’d want to be around. I guess not as bad as Mary, definitely not as bad as Blaine in this continuity I think he has the impetus to become that bad since he now has his father to look to as a role model.

Seems unfair to judge the kid based on who his alternate universe counterpart grew up to be. Walkyverse Walky grew up to be a military leader, but Dumbiverse Walky doesn’t deserve any praise for that.

I’m not singing the kid’s praises or anything, but he just got lumped in with an adult rapist and an adult domestic abuser. He could grow up to be as bad as either of them, or he could grow up to be a completely decent fellow, but right now he’s just a weird child. That’s what childhood is. When a child swears you don’t say “What a rude little shit” you say “Who’s been swearing around the child?”

To my knowledge, there is an auto-comment filter that replaces the banned words with the ‘~’ character. I think part of the reason is Willis was tired of hearing about certain other universe characters here, and thus confusing some people, in a similar manner that may of just happened to you.

so wait us saying spidercar still confuses the heck of people despite us no longer being able to say spidercar because Willis was tired of us confusing people about what spidercar is. So ultimately we still confuse people by saying spidercar just for very different reasons P.S. spidercar

Every character could be developed further — it’s the author’s choice. As for Sierra, she never wears shoes . . . in Indiana. If that’s not the basis for some serious plot action — based on the difficulty this will cause when the weather turns, as well as on the tension between her easy-going nature and her diehard stubbornness — I don’t know what is.

That said, Yotomoe would probably want her to go to bed with him, just for starters . . . to answer your question. 😀

Do we know where she’s from for that matter ? Suddenly I realize you’re right barefoot in snow, while fun for like, 10 feet, would destroy your feet after too much of it. Headcanon for me now places her from Arkansas, because that’s where my friends who never wear shoes are from

I don’t know. Mary was kind of a bongo about just being disturbed at 3 in the afternoon.

As for Sierra, a happy go lucky well balanced person can still be challenged by circumstance. It’s not necessary for everything bad or disrupting to have happened or begun in childhood or be associated with bad parents. The world’s full of other things that can bend or break a person, and if we know anything about Willis, he doesn’t balk at using them in his art … the bastard.
(wink in his direction)

Ha, I can imagine Joyce saying that. Except for the bit where she admits knowing what those sites are. (I figure she know, because evwn if she somehow never found out at home, between Mike and Joe someone has decided to “ruin” that blissful ignorance.

what? Joe really doesn’t come off as ‘rapey’ at all. At worst, he would seduce her, which I suppose could be considered disrespectful.
And I can think of times when suggesting that someone gets ‘sexed’ to loosen up wouldn’t be offensive (in most situations it is though).

Nah, I’m guessing it has to do with semicolons. Either that or had done something horrible in the past that causes her to create a persona and on that particular day, the persona returns….but my bets on the semicolon thing.

While her foul mood in of itself doesn’t indicate anything (after all, this is Mary we’re talking about), considering who her roommate is, I’d say there’s a fair chance she’s been sexiled, and she’s waiting for the room to no longer be “in-use,” so to speak.

I dunno… Mary’s the kind of character where she seems okay if you don’t look real close, but the more you focus on her and the more detail you get, the worse she gets, and there’s always more worse buried there inside the fine details. Like some kind of fractal of terrible.

There was a pretty big storyline where someone went to her thinking she was still a friend, and she was a hugely judgmental jerk. That was pretty notable. It’s just that she wasn’t in a lot of storylines.

You should look up for what ‘strawman’ means. If it is a real argument a real person would use, it is not strawman by definition. If you agree people like Mary exist, then you shouldn’t accuse her of being a strawman.

This atheist is hopeful this is where Willis launches Mary’s character development.
Take a look at that poll on the right of the screen. This is the *least* popular character in the DoA panoply. And rightfully so; she makes Carol Brown look like David Foster Wallace.
I’ll never be able to relate to her, but anyone who doubts that Willis is going to be able to make her into an incredibly deep and nuanced character hasn’t been reading for long.

She does kinda have a point, unknowingly, with all the jerkish behavior lately. Ethan holing up in the closet, Amber refusing to face her problems, Billie lying about quitting booze, Joyce enabling Ethan’s self destructive behavior, and Danny being… Danny. All we need now is the revelation of Dina feeding minor characters to a hidden pack of Deinonychus.

There’s a fundamental difference between judging real people and judging fictional characters. Real people are as complex as you are, so you can never understand them well enough to judge them fairly. Fictional characters are simple enough to have been conceived in the mind of one person, and judging them is an essential part of judging the artwork.

But if that were true, that’d mean there was no reason to judge a character based on how you felt about them, only based on how well they were written, because liking a work’s characters and liking the work aren’t necessarily linked. Since characters are meant to emulate real people, that means they can be treated like them, and judged or not judged according to what you know. I agree that you can never judge people fairly, but I don’t think that means all judgement is automatically unfair, and either way it doesn’t prevent people from judging people.

My main judgement of any artwork is: Do I like it? then: Why? then: What else do I feel about it? then … How well it is written comes some way down my list, because I’m not a professional critic, and I don’t want to be. How I feel about the characters is an important part of what I feel about the whole thing, though “dislike” can be as good as “like”.

It’s completely fair to judge a fictional character on what we see of them, because that’s all there is of them. We have, literally, seen everything there is to see, and anything else is our own invention. Of course, the author might write more, in which case we must rejudge. But reserving judgement isn’t being fair, it’s being inconclusive.

You can never judge a fictional character as if they were real, because you can never interact with them. The main way we decide if we like people is based on how they react to us face-to-face, how they respond to our prompts, verbal & nonverbal, conscious & unconscious. Without that interaction, our instinctive judgement is not much use. Instead, we must judge them on what they say and do, because that’s all there is.

She’s hardly done anything in DoA, but since the hardly anything that she’s done includes being intolerant of Sierra because she doesn’t wear shoes, being intolerant of Dorothy because she’s not a Christian, being intolerant of Joyce for trying to bring non-believers to Christ, being intolerant of Roz because she’s Roz, and being a nosy, judgmental bothriospondylus about basically everything she’s ever seen Billie do (though, to be fair, Billie did bust in on her when she wasn’t dressed by 3 PM, so a bit of a grudge is understandable), and nothing good or helpful whatsoever ever, I feel pretty safe assuming that she’s still terrible.

I looked back on this, because my memory was fuzzy and I wondered what abysmal things Mary had to have done in her one notable scene to be this hated. Intolerant of Sierra because she doesn’t wear shoes: Yes. Intolerant of Dorothy because she’s not a Christian: Yes. Being intolerant of Joyce for bringing non-believers to Christ: Yes, in the same way Becky has been. Being intolerant of Roz because she’s Roz: Not sure. We’ve seen her complain about her habits, but we haven’t seen them interacting at any point. Dorothy started out assuming badly about Roz, and Billie fumed over Sal for a long time.

I don’t see where you’re coming from when you say ‘nosy’. Dorothy’s atheism only came up after she’d been talking about doubting the sermon for a while, and I don’t think she’s actually had any interaction with Billie besides that time Billie hid out in her room. As for nothing good or helpful, you could say the same about Daisy. Or Jason. Or even Sal, depending on what you think about her threatening to punch Ruth or warning Joyce about the cops.

Joyce explores and tries to correct herself because she assumes the best from people, and thinks everyone has good in them. From what we’ve seen of Mary, she seems pretty isolated, and that isolation is self-enforced, only hanging out with people who meet her ideology/attitude exactly. There’s no chance she’ll change her attitude if she doesn’t change who she hangs out with, but she can’t because then she doesn’t have any guarantee or set of rules that proves they’re what she can consider good people. It’s a terrible cycle, and ultimately her fault.

I’m kind of concerned people are judging her more on attitude than on her actions so far. Also, while this doesn’t excuse her intolerance, I think it’s kinda important to remember that she hasn’t targeted anyone. When discovering Dorothy’s atheism, she said what she thought and left. She hasn’t gone around condemning sinners on campus. The worst she’s done is not interact with people who don’t share her beliefs, which, as you say, is neutral. Not likeable but not assholish enough to push through the other side and become likeable in a rascally way, she’s mainly annoying, and annoying marks you down as a dumping ground of hate in fiction, being that readers are much more likely to have been irritated by those same attitudes in their own lives. (See: Danny.)

1. Ewww, comments with more than one paragraph!
2. I agree, people are judging her too harshly. We haven’t seen her do anything that is really aimed at anyone.
3. Lawful Neutral is the new face of Evil, just saying.

It’s often been my experience that when people are as bitter and judgmental as Mary they’ve experienced some pretty terrible personal tragedies in their lives and routine disappointments from people who are important to them. I know this isn’t always the case, but generally people don’t end up being that angry without some damage. I’d like to see this aspect of Mary’s character explored. I’m not saying she needs a redemption arc, but perhaps something to explain why she feels the way she does about the rest of humanity. A character can be despised and a terrible person while at the same time being sympathetic and possibly even likable (I’m looking at you, Walter White).

I’d really like it if Mary’s character was explored a bit more. Flat unsympathic characters are sometimes necessary, but, as characters like Raidah show us, you can dislike the main characters’ actions and still come from a reasonable place. Mary’s always seemed condemning while miserable, and seeing the source of that misery would be interesting.

I’m not sure that applies in the same way, though. Mike was a frontrunner for 15 years, and his character from the early days got so well-known that changing it up much wouldn’t make sense. Despite this, he’s still gotten a lot of exploration, as his relationship with Amber, fallout from Dina, and 180 intoxication proves.

If you’re looking at all appearances, I’d say Mary is more like Sarah, since she appeared in the Walkyverse a few times and, while noticeable, never got a lot of development. Sarah in the Dumbiverse is a much more developed character than Sarah in the Walkyverse, and there’s no saying this won’t happen again.

Ethan, Walky and Danny are the only ones I’m sure are out (Walky because of relationship, Ethan because of sexuality and Danny because of sorta-relationship and ew, Danny), so let’s list the possibilities! Jacob, Mike, Faz (could have come back to see her), Joe (redux), Jason…er. Hm. Wow, that few?

Actually, looking at the chapter title, it’s possible she’s not doin’ someone but rather something. Something that starts with a W and ends in arijuana.